JOOI Club Partners with the Anguilla National Trust, Local Businesses,

 

JOOI Club Partners with the Anguilla National Trust, Local Businesses,
and the Sandy Ground Community on Pond Restoration Project

During the early rainy morning of Saturday 19 September, more than 30 members representing Anguilla’s Junior Optimist Octagon International (JOOI) Clubs and their advisors met at Road Salt Pond to participate in a pond restoration project co-organised by the Anguilla National Trust and the JOOI Club.

The restoration project involved planting over a dozen buttonwood trees along the southwest perimeter of the pond. Road Pond is a 98 acre, almost circular pond that is owned by the Government of Anguilla. One of the most prolific ponds in terms of bird life, it is a favourite site for birdwatchers as hundred of birds can be seen nesting, resting, and feeding there throughout the year. The Pond also has a rich history as it was once the centre of Anguilla’s salt harvesting industry which was an important contributor to Anguilla’s economy until the early 1970s.

While Sandy Ground continues to be a popular place for both locals and visitors with the beach front developing quickly, the health of the pond appears to be slowly degrading, due to grey water and sewage pollution, littering, and the loss of vegetation (by a combination of grazing goats and sheep, landscaping, and storm damage). The JOOI Club saw the latter issue as one that they could help address.

Vegetation around the pond plays a number of important roles: it helps to filter nutrients from the rainwater runoff that enters the pond and eventually the sea, it provides habitat for wildlife, and acts as a buffer against noise created from passing traffic. Buttonwood trees often comprise much of Anguilla’s natural pondline vegetation because of its tolerance for sun, sandy soils, and salty conditions. While secondary vegetation growth is beginning to occur along some parts of the pondline, the hardier buttonwood has yet to make a comeback.

After consulting with the ANT, the JOOI team agreed to plant the buttonwood in the corner of Road Pond that sustained the most damage from Hurricane Omar.

The restoration project was sponsored by the Anguilla Garden Centre in Sandy Ground which donated a dozen green buttonwood trees, Vice Roy Anguilla Resort and Properties (Landscaping division) which donated five silver buttonwood trees, and LIME which donated soil through its local Go Green Campaign.

This is not the first time that the Anguilla JOOI Club has partnered with the ANT or has been involved in environmental projects. They have also participated in a number of beach and community clean-ups along with other tree-planting campaigns. According to the JOOI Club Coordinator, Ms AVON Carty, the Road Pond restoration initiative, could grow into something much larger as the young people involved expressed much enthusiasm for the project and the site. Ms Carty suggests that the JOOI Club could partner with the Sandy Ground community and the Anguilla National Trust and “adopt the pond” – taking care of and ensuring its environmental health, promoting its history, and celebrating its beauty. The ANT would welcome such a partnership and looks forward to working with these dedicated young people in the future.

The ANT and the JOOI Club would like to thank the Anguilla Garden Centre, Vice Roy Anguilla Resort and Properties, and LIME for their support of this important community-based project.

Farah Mukhida 22 September 2009
Executive Director